Saturday, January 26, 2008

"A decade ago, Israeli scientists published a study in which engineers observed patient care in I.C.U.s for twenty-four-hour stretches. They found that the average patient required a hundred and seventy-eight individual actions per day, ranging from administering a drug to suctioning the lungs, and every one of them posed risks."

"In 2001, though, a critical-care specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital named Peter Pronovost decided to give it a try. He didn’t attempt to make the checklist cover everything; he designed it to tackle just one problem, the one that nearly killed Anthony DeFilippo: line infections. On a sheet of plain paper, he plotted out the steps to take in order to avoid infections when putting a line in. Doctors are supposed to (1) wash their hands with soap, (2) clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic, (3) put sterile drapes over the entire patient, (4) wear a sterile mask, hat, gown, and gloves, and (5) put a sterile dressing over the catheter site once the line is in. Check, check, check, check, check. These steps are no-brainers; they have been known and taught for years. So it seemed silly to make a checklist just for them. Still, Pronovost asked the nurses in his I.C.U. to observe the doctors for a month as they put lines into patients, and record how often they completed each step. In more than a third of patients, they skipped at least one."

"Pronovost and his colleagues monitored what happened for a year afterward. The results were so dramatic that they weren’t sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line-infection rate went from eleven per cent to zero. So they followed patients for fifteen more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs."

"If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it."

Saturday, January 12, 2008

"Managers decide to crunch because they want to be able to tell their bosses 'I did everything I could' "

"I think the reason there is this optimism, and ignoring what "could" go wrong - because if we did add it all up, the risk and cost would pretty much freak everybody out and nothing could get done. Its more a case of people ignoring the risks and hoping it works out.

Its not just software either. Ask anyone who has built a house, renovated, built a bridge, a building etc."

"I (now) use a rule of thumb when I approach a new project or design problem: I try to think of ten things that could go wrong before I start. If I can’t think of ten things that could go wrong, I haven’t thought enough.

First, I look for “lack of” areas where the team doesn’t have experience, knowledge, or information. Then I look for areas where we’re dependent on someone else to provide something—areas where the project team doesn’t have control of a needed component. I look for areas where not all the key players are in agreement. And I look for areas where there’s not enough time to finish a component—or finish with desired quality. These questions help me identify natural areas of risk."

"...it is the influence of leisure on consumption which makes the short day and, the short week so necessary. The people who consume the bulk of goods are the people who make them. That is a fact we must never forget -- that is the secret of our prosperity."

"Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out -- they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less."

"Business is the exchange of goods. Goods are bought only as they meet needs. Needs are filled only as they are felt. They make themselves felt largely in leisure hours. The man who worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day desired only a comer to be in and a hunk of food. He had no time to cultivate new needs. No industry could ever be built up by filling his needs, because he had none but the most primitive."

"It is the intersection of power and machinery in the hands of management which has made the shorter day and the shorter week possible."

"As the world turned its gaze toward Turkey, expecting what was thought to be inevitable, the Turkish people shook the floor of the global stage and gave a resounding message of hope to the wretched. We have seen there are still things in life worth a sacrifice. Turkey, a nation whose economy is in dire straits and which faces social upheaval, preserved its dignity....How sad to see Turkey suffering for people who refuse to help themselves and to know that Turkey will pay a higher price — while the Arabs refuse to pay a much lower one — to save their Iraqi brothers....Will you simply switch the channel to the sewage of Arab music clips and dance your way out of history? As for me, I will not shed a tear for your demise, for you would have deserved it."

Monday, January 07, 2008

"One terrifying side effect of learning the world isn't the way you think is that it leaves you all alone. And when you try to describe your new worldview to people, it either comes out sounding unsurprising ("yeah, sure, everyone knows the media's got problems") or like pure lunacy and people slowly back away."

Today I gave a try to Jottit. It is a simple way to publish online. What makes it special is that your edit history is stored so that you can revert changes. Another plus is that other people can edit your pages, if you allow them of course. It seems to be the way to go if you want to have your personal wiki.

For predicting, we need a model of relationship of predicted variable with other measurable variables. Three assumptions (Kitchenham):

1. We can accurately measure some property of software or process.2. A relationship exists between what we can measure and what we want to know.3. This relationship is understood, has been validated, and can be expressed in terms of a formula or model.

* Are usually caused by flawed requirements** Incomplete or wrong assumptions about operation of controlled system or required operation of computer.** Unhandled controlled−system states and environmental conditions.

* Merely trying to get the software "correct" or to make it reliable will not make it safer under these conditions.

The primary safety problem in computer−based systems is the lack of appropriate constraints on design. The job of the system safety engineer is to identify the design constraints necessary to maintain safety and to ensure the system and software design enforces them.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

"What is the implication of the possibility, mounting a bit every day, that we are alone in the universe?...It means that we have a job to do, a mission that will last all our ages to come: to seed and then to shepherd intelligent life beyond this pale blue dot."

"I used to believe that there were experts and non-experts and that, on the whole, the judgment of experts is more accurate, more valid, and more correct than my own judgment. But over the years, thinking — and I should add, experience — has changed my mind. What experts have that I don't are knowledge and experience in some specialized area. What, as a class, they don't have any more than I do is the skills of judgment, rational thinking and wisdom."